THE VIC­TORY: Doug McCal­lum is Sur­rey’s Mayor once again

By Si­mon Lit­tle McCal­lum, who was first elected to coun­cil in 1993, served as mayor of Sur­rey from 1996 to 2005. The head of the Safe Sur­rey Coali­tion, de­feated chal­lengers Coun. Tom Gill with Sur­rey First and Coun. Bruce Hayne with In­tegrity Now in a bruis­ing cam­paign that in­cluded al­le­ga­tions of at­tempted elec­tion fraud. His elec­tion her­alds a big shakeup in Sur­rey pol­i­tics, with big-ticket prom­ises to rad­i­cally change the city’s di­rec­tion. McCal­lum pledged to do away with the Sur­rey RCMP, amid on­go­ing shoot­ings as well as gang and drug crime. He’s promis­ing to re­place the Moun­ties with Sur­rey’s own mu­nic­i­pal po­lice force and a home­grown po­lice board. McCal­lum’s elec­tion could also put the brakes on the $1.65-bil­lion light rail tran­sit (LRT) project pro­posed for the city. The project has al­ready se­cured fund­ing from three lev­els of govern­ment, how­ever McCal­lum ar­gued at-grade tran­sit will cause con­ges­tion, and says he wants to see the city pur­sue el­e­vated SkyTrain in­stead. McCal­lum at­tempted a come­back in 2014, but was de­feated by Sur­rey First’s Linda Hep­ner by about 20,000 votes. McCal­lum was un­seated from the mayor’s of­fice in 2005 by Dianne Watts, who later went on to found the Surry First slate in 2008. Sur­rey First has held the may­oralty since then. On leav­ing of­fice, McCal­lum left Sur­rey with a $300-mil­lion sur­plus.